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		Argobots Release %VERSION%

Argobots is a lightweight, low-level threading and tasking framework. This release is an experimental version of Argobots that contains features related to user-level threads, tasklets, and some schedulers.

This README file should contain enough information to get you started with Argobots. More information about Argobots can be found at http://www.argobots.org.

1. Getting Started
2. Testing Argobots
3. Reporting Problems
4. Alternate Configure Options
5. Compiler Flags
6. Developer Builds

1. Getting Started ==================

The following instructions take you through a sequence of steps to get the default configuration of Argobots up and running.

(a) You will need the following prerequisites.

- REQUIRED: This tar file argobots-%VERSION%.tar.gz

- REQUIRED: A C compiler (gcc is sufficient)

Also, you need to know what shell you are using since different shell has different command syntax. Command "echo $SHELL" prints out the current shell used by your terminal program.

(b) Unpack the tar file and go to the top level directory:

tar xzf argobots-%VERSION%.tar.gz
cd argobots-%VERSION%

If your tar doesn't accept the z option, use

gunzip argobots-%VERSION%.tar.gz
tar xf argobots-%VERSION%.tar
cd argobots-%VERSION%

(c) Choose an installation directory, say /home/USERNAME/argobots-install, which is assumed to be non-existent or empty.

(d) Configure Argobots specifying the installation directory:

for csh and tcsh:

  ./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/argobots-install |& tee c.txt

for bash and sh:

  ./configure --prefix=/home/USERNAME/argobots-install 2>&1 | tee c.txt

Bourne-like shells, sh and bash, accept "2>&1 |". Csh-like shell, csh and tcsh, accept "|&". If a failure occurs, the configure command will display the error. Most errors are straight-forward to follow.

(e) Build Argobots:

for csh and tcsh:

  make |& tee m.txt

for bash and sh:

  make 2>&1 | tee m.txt

This step should succeed if there were no problems with the preceding step. Check file m.txt. If there were problems, do a "make clean" and then run make again with V=1.

make V=1 |& tee m.txt       (for csh and tcsh)

OR

make V=1 2>&1 | tee m.txt   (for bash and sh)

Then go to step 3 below, for reporting the issue to the Argobots developers and other users.

(f) Install Argobots:

for csh and tcsh:

  make install |& tee mi.txt

for bash and sh:

  make install 2>&1 | tee mi.txt

This step collects all required executables and scripts in the bin subdirectory of the directory specified by the prefix argument to configure.

2. Testing Argobots ===================

To test Argobots, we package the Argobots test suite in the Argobots distribution. You can run the test suite in the test directory using:

 make check

 OR

 make testing

The distribution also includes some Argobots examples. You can run them in the examples directory using:

 make check

 OR

 make testing

If you run into any problems on running the test suite or examples, please follow step 3 below for reporting them to the Argobots developers and other users.

3. Reporting Problems =====================

If you have problems with the installation or usage of Argobots, please follow these steps:

(a) First visit the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page at https://github.com/pmodels/argobots/wiki/FAQ to see if the problem you are facing has a simple solution.

(b) If you cannot find an answer on the FAQ page, look through previous email threads on the [email protected] mailing list archive (https://lists.argobots.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss). It is likely someone else had a similar problem, which has already been resolved before.

(c) If neither of the above steps work, please send an email to [email protected]. You need to subscribe to this list (https://lists.argobots.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss) before sending an email.

Your email should contain the following files. ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE COMPRESS BEFORE SENDING, AS THE FILES CAN BE LARGE. Note that, depending on which step the build failed, some of the files might not exist.

argobots-%VERSION%/c.txt (generated in step 1(d) above)
argobots-%VERSION%/m.txt (generated in step 1(e) above)
argobots-%VERSION%/mi.txt (generated in step 1(f) above)
argobots-%VERSION%/config.log (generated in step 1(d) above)

DID WE MENTION? DO NOT FORGET TO COMPRESS THESE FILES!

Finally, please include the actual error you are seeing when running the application. If possible, please try to reproduce the error with a smaller application or benchmark and send that along in your bug report.

(d) If you have found a bug in Argobots, we request that you report it at our github issues page (https://github.com/pmodels/argobots/issues). Even if you believe you have found a bug, we recommend you sending an email to [email protected] first.

4. Alternate Configure Options ==============================

Argobots has a number of other features. If you are exploring Argobots as part of a development project, you might want to tweak the Argobots build with the following configure options. A complete list of configuration options can be found using:

./configure --help

5. Compiler Flags =================

By default, Argobots automatically adds certain compiler optimizations to CFLAGS. The currently used optimization level is -O2.

This optimization level can be changed with the --enable-fast option passed to configure. For example, to build Argobots with -O3, one can simply do:

./configure --enable-fast=O3

Or to disable all compiler optimizations, one can do:

./configure --disable-fast

For more details of --enable-fast, see the output of "./configure --help".

For performance testing, we recommend the following flags:

./configure --enable-fast=O3,ndebug --enable-tls-model=initial-exec \
            --enable-affinity --disable-checks

OR

./configure --enable-perf-opt --enable-affinity --disable-checks

6. Developer Builds ===================

For Argobots developers who want to directly work on the primary version control system, there are a few additional steps involved (people using the release tarballs do not have to follow these steps). Details about these steps can be found here: https://github.com/pmodels/argobots/wiki/Getting-and-Building